Yabloko party wants founder Yavlinskiy to run for presidency

The veteran Russian liberal Yabloko party has announced it will back one of its founders, Grigory Yavlinskiy, to run in the 2018 presidential elections on a pacifist and anti-oligarchy agenda.

The decision to register Yavlinskiy as a candidate to run in the
2018 presidential election was made by Yabloko’s political
committee and published on the party’s website. However, the
message also reads that a final decision on the issue will be
made at the next party congress.

The political committee stated in their message: “The only
effective political decision that has some perspective” was
to create an alternative to Vladimir Putin. They added that
Yavlinskiy was a perfect candidate for this as he was capable of
uniting “all voters with democratic leanings.”

In the message, the party defined their leader’s program as
opposition to the “Russian authoritarian and oligarchic
economic and political system.”

According to the authors of the plan, despite extensive
experience in politics Yavlinskiy managed to keep an untarnished
reputation and remain free of any associations with oligarchy or
corruption.

Yabloko is one of the oldest political parties in modern Russia.
Founded in 1993, it always targeted a liberal-minded voter and
several times managed to get minor parliamentary representation.
In the last parliamentary poll, Yabloko garnered over three
percent of votes, which didn’t grant it any seats but gave some
procedural preferences for future elections.

Grigory Yavlinskiy was among the party’s three co-founders and
headed it until 2008 when he stepped down and gave way to his
longtime deputy Sergey Mitrokhin. Yavlinskiy still remains in
Yabloko’s political council and regularly represents the party at
various events.

Yavlinskiy is no stranger to Russian presidential elections. In
1996 he got 7.4 percent of the votes and in 2000, 5.8 percent. He
also registered as a candidate in 2012 but the authorities
removed him from the polls after a large share of supporters’
signatures provided by his headquarters were deemed invalid.